Polygon Gallery Opens in North Vancouver

The new $20-million Polygon Gallery on the North Vancouver waterfront has launched its first show, N. Vancouver, with impressive work that looks at the city, past and present. The 25,000-square-foot facility, jump-started by a $4-million gift from art collector Michael Audain in 2014 – he’s also the chair of Polygon Homes – replaces the former Presentation House Gallery and is the largest photo-focused exhibition space in Western Canada. N. Vancouver, on view until April 29, includes newly commissioned works from 15 regional artists, with existing pieces from various public and private collections.

“It’s really important to me that the first exhibition in this new building really reflects a view of our hometown but also of the North Shore and its long history,” says Reid Shier, Polygon’s executive director. “Tension around land, ownership and use is a conversation that is very evident in North Vancouver.” Conflicts between nature and industry and the community’s evolution from a working-class enclave to a cosmopolitan metropolis, form the underlying spine of the show.

Curt Lang, "North Vancouver Streets and Alleys," 1972

(courtesy Vancouver Public Library Special Collections, 85876A)

The keynotes of history and progress are realized through a variety of styles and techniques. For instance, Rodney Graham, known for creating staged setups, meticulously restaged American realist Thomas Eakins’ 1871 painting Max Schmitt in a Single Scull in a local river. The piece is called, appropriately enough, Paddler, Mouth of the Seymour.

Graham’s contemporary, Stan Douglas, went one step further. Douglas created a picture of North Vancouver’s historic squatter community entirely from scratch, melding aerial photographs from the 1950s with archival pictures of old shanties to create Lazy Bay, a digital rendition of a lifestyle that no longer exists.

Meanwhile, Andrew Dadson painted a cedar tree with non-toxic, biodegradable white paint and then framed the picture so the natural forest pokes through around the edges. The result, White Tree, evokes the paintings of Mark Rothko.

Andrew Dadson, “White Tree,” 2017

Jordan Abel, a Nisga’a poet, offers a photo-mural, Cartography. Abel took lines of text from an unnamed western novel, printed them on sheets of vinyl and stitched them together to form the outline of Burrard Inlet with Vancouver on one side and the North Shore on the other, thus drawing a connection between language, land and territory. The piece fills an entire wall.

Jordan Abel, "Cartography" (courtesy the artist)

Althea Thauberger, who, like Vancouver School stalwarts Graham and Douglas, uses actors (and in her case, ordinary folks too) to populate her work, is one of three videographers in the show. Her photograph, Listers of Earthy, is a production still from a video that will be screened at the Polygon next year.

Althea Thauberger with Natalie Purschwitz, "Listers of Earthy," 2017

production stills for works in the exhibition (photo by Amy Romer)

Greg Girard turned his eye to North Shore industry. Grain Terminal and Kinder Morgan Sulfur Terminal, North Vancouver champion iconic utilitarian structures. The late Curt Lang, one of the region’s original beatnik poets (he died in 1988) took a matter-of-fact approach to photography in North Vancouver Streets and Alleys. “It was a rough town back then,” says Shier. “We often forget what a different kind of space we are now living in.”

Greg Girard, “Untitled (Grain Terminal),” 2013

North Vancouver’s backstory continues in a series of photographs from Iain and Ingrid Baxter and their N.E. Thing Co. Single Light Cast, Seymour River and Ski Line Rack, Anonymous Mountain are but two of eight photographs of the found objects and sites the cheeky pranksters deemed to be “art” back in the ’60s and ’70s.

If the photographs harken back to earlier times, so too does the Polygon’s architecture. The blocky exterior, clad in polished stainless steel and perforated aluminum, speaks of manufacturing. So too does the saw-toothed roof. After all, this part of North Vancouver used to be sawmill and shipbuilding territory. It is now being redeveloped into condos and shops. Yet for all its brutishness, the Polygon, designed by Patkau Architects, is warm and welcoming. A huge glass curtain along the sidewalk lures visitors into the front lobby. The back windows overlook the harbour. The entire building is awash in light and the unobstructed vista of downtown Vancouver from the gallery’s second floor is particularly impressive.

Perhaps Cameron Kerr’s untitled mixed-media installation sums up the Polygon best. Using aerial photographs of a nearby expressway as inspiration, Kerr constructed idiosyncratic, surrealistic 3-D sculptures of signs and structures along its route. His main piece, Taylor Way Overpass, is an eight-foot-high yellow cedar sculpture. Most of us take the things that we pass on a daily basis for granted, says Shier. “In Cameron’s version, this has been taken up and expanded into this incredibly provocative piece of artwork.”

Sculpture, constructions, video – the Polygon will welcome them all. Look for Myfanwy MacLeod’s wooden construction, TheButcher's Apron, a one-eighth-scale replica of George Vancouver’s ship, Discovery, as you walk through the front door. “We’re taking a very liberal approach,” says Shier about the gallery’s mandate. Photography, yes, but the Polygon is also keeping its options open. ■

Tags

Vancouver-based journalist John Thomson holds a BFA in painting from the University of Manitoba School of Art. Trained at the CBC after graduation, he comes from a news and current affairs background and today writes arts-related stories.